in America, your vote is not for the Party but rather the candidate. you vote for a person. sometimes the person elected changes Party once serving in Congress. until Primary elections are complete, we won't even know who the Party sponsored candidates will be. Primaries happen in March - May depending on the state. one thing for certain about the 2018 general election is there will be far more Democrats running in traditional Republican states than ever before. Some are thinking blue wave.

I like the pragmatism of many of your respondents in saying they evaluate the individual candidates, which is a good rule of thumb if only the propaganda BOTS unleashed by right-wing extremists and the Russian MAFIA gangs were not in the mix.

The Democratic party platform endorsed our REAL 45th President Hillary Clinton's ideas and ideals---to include the idea of profit-sharing for American workers and making CEO corporate salaries more proportionate to what these over-paid [corporate raiding] CEOs were willing to pay the workers upon whose labors the profits depend. Instead of the Independent Socialist Bernie Sanders idea for "free college for everyone---even the rich" Hillary wisely proposed what Democratic President Barack Obama had sought: Changing the K-12 public school coverage to one that included two years of a community college, or K-14. This two-year access to advanced education would increase the earning potential for young adults who would not otherwise be able to afford college and would more than likely be stuck in dead-end low-wage service jobs. Democrats favor maintaining affordable access to health care for all of us, including low-wage or poor families, and have attempted to introduce bills to perfect the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P.L.111-148) and its popular supplemental Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (P.L.111-152), a.k.a., the Affordable Care Act or Obama Care---especially the provisions that require all greed-driven 1300 for-profit insurers (whose lobbyists outnumber our elected D.C. representatives by at least 100 to 1) to include FREE preventive care on all policies, and to implement the Democrats' "80/20 RULE" which requires each insurer to spend at least 80% of all premium dollars you (the consumers) pay ON YOU for actual health care in the year or else the insurer has to REFUND THE DIFFERENCE to you at the end of each year. As you can imagine, the corporate-colluding Congressional Republicans reliant too much on insurance industry dollars (see opensecrets.org to follow the money or try littlesis.org) and the all-profits/no-payout insurers hate this consumer-serving Democrats-passed rule.

Democrats are simply better for balancing the budget, slashing the deficit, fully funding our public schools, reducing crime nationwide, and keeping our social safety nets intact to help American families in need.

Republicans are off-course since at least Reagan days, although a few moderate-in-hiding Republicans have shown a willingness to break free from the insane Koch brother oil barons' libertarian government-takeover (in favor of absolute-power oligarchy like in Russia)---folks like Maine Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) and her ilk. Suggested reads include Jane Mayer (2017), "DARK MONEY: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right"' David Brock (former right-wing extremist), 2004: "The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy"; David Cay Johnston (2016), "The Making of Donald Trump"; and Malcolm Nance (2016), a former top level CIA covert ops specialist, "The Hacking of America."